Blake Lively Could Not Have Been Sexually Harassed: The Order and What's Next

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

The information and ideas expressed in the allegedly golden podcast are legal explanation and legal analysis, not legal advice. While I am a lawyer, I am not your lawyer. If you need legal advice, please contact a licensed legal professional in your area. My opinions are my own. For better or for worse.

SPEAKER_01 0:32

We're finally here. There were days I did not think we would get here, but we are here. We have the judge's order on the dispositive motions that we've been waiting on for a long time. The downside is that it coincided with me getting a horrible cold from my walking petri dish that lives in my house. The good news is that I took the day off yesterday and rested my voice, and all that is left of the cold now is this gravelly uh sound that I make, which frankly I think is pretty hot. So we are going to talk about this order. You are going to have to listen to it in this voice. I hope you like it. I'm always really hesitant to base my content on other people's content. In other words, to make my content reactive rather than proactive. Um, because I never want to give too much credit or too much time to people that I think are trying to spread misinformation. But I think in the case of this particular order and the issues that were raised in it, it's not just that some talking points are going around that are misleading people about what really happened here. This is also a really important learning opportunity for folks because it goes to the heart of how a lot of employment law in particular works. And, you know, one of my goals is always to empower people to know like what is going on behind the scenes, how this stuff actually happens, how it works. And so I'm gonna take the opportunity to explain this in a way that hopefully will help you not just understand this order, but will understand sort of the universe of these kinds of laws altogether. But I do think it's important at the outset to be real clear about what this judge decided. Because I have seen, of course, a lot of takes about, well, he didn't get to the sexual harassment stuff, so he didn't decide that anybody was sexually harassed, or I'll get, don't worry, I'll get to the issue of like this was a technicality or whatever. But I want to be really clear. I want to make a statement that is legally accurate, that you can take with you, that you can share about what the judge decided, particularly on the uh employee versus independent contractor issue and the actor loan out issue, the issues that killed her sexual harassment claims. And the statement is Blake Lively could not have been sexually harassed. What the judge found was Blake Lively could not have been sexually harassed under the law. That is the finding. And I understand that if somebody hears that from an emotional place, it sounds as if I'm saying it was not possible for her to be treated differently. It was not possible for a man to cross her boundaries. Of course, those things are possible. Those things can happen to anyone. The question here was Was Blake Lively ever vulnerable enough on the set of It Ends With Us in the context of this film with these people that she could be treated differently to the degree that a law was violated. And the court found that she was never that vulnerable, and therefore that law could never be violated. You know, from day one, there have been people who have been trying to make Lively an avatar for all women who experience sexism in the workplace, not the least of which is Lively herself. That has been a big part of her PR campaign, and that happens sometimes when a person with a lot of exposure goes through something, they become an avatar for everybody else. And, you know, it is not lost on me or anyone else that most women do experience sexism in the workplace of some kind. And so it's been easy for people to take her and say, you know, if it can happen to her with her power and her influence, it can happen to anyone. This is a this is a siren's call to all of us that if it can happen to her, it can happen to you. But what this week's order actually demonstrated is the opposite of that. What this week's order demonstrated is that all of those faceless women, all of those women lower on the totem pole, all of those women who deal with this on a daily basis, who are scared to talk to their bosses, who are scared to bring up issues in the workplace, that all of those women have more legal protection than Blake Lively has because they have less power. She doesn't have the legal protection of these sexual harassment laws because she has too much power to be protected. When you have the power and the choices, and you can protect yourself through your contracts, through your actions, through your demands, the law doesn't need to protect you the way that it does. The people who need to work to survive, the people who don't get to bargain for their rights in the workplace. So please keep that in mind. Because the story of Blake Lively is not a story of every woman. It is the opposite. And the finding that the judge has made that she had too much power to be sexually harassed according to the law is exactly the flip side of what protects all of the women who have no power at all. And let's talk about it. Let's talk about why she could not have been sexually harassed, right? That's the statement. She could not have been sexually harassed under the law. And the judge takes great pains over many, many, many pages that I've read many times now. Um, and what he essentially says in multiple ways is she could not have been sexually harassed because of the choices that she made. And that is not victim blaming, that is not saying what was she wearing or how did she talk to people. It's because of the choices she made about how she wanted to be a part of this film in a business sense. These were business decisions. Because she had the power to negotiate her agreement for how she was gonna work on this film. A multi-page agreement, by the way, and she had lawyers negotiating it for a year. Because she had the power to negotiate that agreement, to bargain for everything she wanted, down to how much food they were gonna pay for on a daily basis. Because she had the power to do that, she couldn't be sexually harassed. Because she refused to sign her employment contract all during filming, even after filming was over, which no employee could ever do. And she was getting paid, by the way. Because she had her lawyers negotiating the sexual harassment language itself, even after the movie was over, because she begged for more control over the set. She asked for it and she got it because she insisted on getting the PGA mark. That's a big one. Because she bargained for how and when and where the movie was made. The fact that they asked, she asked to have it moved from Boston to New Jersey and New York. Can you imagine an employee doing that? Hey, could you move that factory to me? That'd be great. Because she asked for sign-offs on every little thing on the film, from wardrobe to edits to music, because she called all hands meetings of everyone in charge at her house, and people showed up because she told people I own the film. And let's not forget, because her lawyers sent a notice of breach of contract under the contract that had never been signed, seeing if they could, you know, make it spring into being. But instead of giving the 30 days of notice to fix that breach, as the contract required, they sued the next day. Why? So that the lawsuit would align with the New York Times article. She made the decision not to follow the processes in the contracts she tried to enforce so that the filing would happen with the New York Times so that the New York Times could publish the complaint. Those are choices that she made, business choices. And those choices are the bases for the judge's decision. And I want to point this out because it's one of those things that is important, but we haven't really gotten down to this level of detail yet. When a judge rules on a motion for summary judgment, the judge rules and looks at the facts in favor of the person who is opposing the motion. In other words, in reading these motions and in looking at the evidence, the judge is required to and did construe all of the facts in lively's favor to the greatest extent possible. And still, and still her choices were her choices. And because of those choices, she could not have been legally sexually harassed under federal law or California law. It's not a flaw in the law, it's not a technicality, it's evidence. Now, there's something here that I want to be careful what I say, because I am not a folks, uh, folks, a spokesperson for feminism by any stretch of the imagination. I speak only on behalf of myself and my own experiences. But when you when you pull this apart and say, well, she was never vulnerable enough to be sexually harassed, because sexual harassment requires that somebody be able to change the workplace for you, right? And no one could do that to her because she had too much power over it. That's what the judge found. By saying that that is unfair, by saying that that is a technicality, there's this undercurrent that if that's unfair, then that means that all women are vulnerable all of the time. And that no matter how much power a woman gets, she is always vulnerable and should always be protected by the law. And I just don't know how I feel about that because I think about Ghlaine Maxwell. And you guys can tell me what you think about that. But as a woman, I'm kind of I think I'm kind of offended by that idea. That no matter how much power we get, no matter how much control we get, we are still vulnerable. And if a man says something that makes us uncomfortable, that we can still make the argument that he was in control over us. I'm just not sure how I feel about that. So, you guys tell me what your feedback is on that. I don't know how many of you watched House, the TV show. Um, it's a great show if you haven't ever watched it. But Dr. House had these sayings that he would say almost every episode that were sort of like his worldview. And one was life is pain, and one was people lie. Everybody lies. And I think that my worldview has really become everything is ultimately about power. The law is certainly about power, but I think in this case is certainly about power, but I think everything at some level is ultimately about power. And watching statements be made um about the standpoint of victims coming from people who were just legally found to have immense power feels off balance to me because it is. If it feels off balance to you, I would posit. It's because it is. But employment law in particular, something I've done for a long time. Employment law is really relational, right? Like in employment law, we oftentimes use like the metaphors like when someone's about to quit, like someone gets word that they're about to be fired, and so then they decide to quit. Like we often say, like, oh, they're gonna break up with us before we can break up with them, right? Like it's very employment law is very relational. And and at a at a foundational level, employment law is about power, of course, because it's about the power between the employer and the employee. Who bears which risks? Who's obligated to the other? What are you obligated for? Um, you know, I have to work how many hours to get how much pay. I mean, employment is just a contract, even if you don't have a contract written down on paper. So it's all about the power dynamic and the leverage between the two sides. Contracts, even outside of employment law, are obviously about power. They are about negotiation and leverage and who gets what and what happens if they don't do what they're supposed to do. Civil law is very power-focused. Um, and frankly, just as a matter of U.S. constitutional law, the US Constitution is all about power. It's about the power of the few versus the power of the many. You know, whether you believe that we're adhering to it at any particular moment, that's what the whole thing is. In fact, the amendment, the equal protection amendment, from which Title VII is derived, right? The reason we have Title VII, the Federal Antidiscrimination Law, is because of the Equal Protection Amendment. And it is literally about the fact that everybody should have equal power. So, you know, if you care about human rights, whether they're women's rights or not, but if you care about human rights or you claim to care about human rights, you have got to care about power and you have got to see how critical power is because who gets the rights and who has the power to take rights away is kind of the whole ballgame. But back to this order. So I have to address this talking point that this is a technicality, that Blake Lively won on a or lost on a technicality. And there's some easy layups here, to be honest. One of them is that, you know, while the Wayfarer case that they had to dismiss was also on technicalities. Um another is the law, the the law is a technicality. Like that's the whole, that's the whole system. Um is that there are requirements of things and you either meet them or you don't. I don't think that the term technicality is being used here in a good faith way. Um, I think that it is being used as a term to anger people and a term to cause people to think about unfairness, right? Technicality, by the way, is not a legal term. There's no legal definition of technicality. In the law, there are procedural matters and there are substantive matters. Sometimes procedural rules have major consequences. Sometimes they're smaller, right? Substantive matters are what we think of as the big questions of did this happen or did this not happen. But technicality is not a legal term. That is a public relations term. And I see a lot of the same tactics being used here as used in like political media, where it's like get people really mad, emotional, and make them feel like something is unfair. And then they'll be on your side. And so by saying something is a technicality, I think that's probably what that's intended to do. But I would ask you to consider this. So there's there's procedural and there's substantive law. Procedural is the how, substantive is the what, right? Um, so for example, we all probably know this from watching true crime or whatever. If someone confesses to a crime, and then the information comes out that they were not read their Miranda rights when they should have been, and their confession is thrown out. Is that a technicality? I mean, it's a procedural issue, right? The confession wasn't thrown out because the confession turned out not to be true. The confession is being thrown out because that person's constitutional right to remain silent from the Fifth Amendment was not given to them. Therefore, the confession can't be used. That's a procedural problem. Now I can see how sometimes people think that's a technicality. I think that's arguable, frankly. But that is a procedural flaw that can have substantive consequences, right? That is the closest to a technicality as the law gets in terms of describing itself. Sometimes a procedural defect creates a problem for the substance. If the police go into your house without a warrant and find evidence that you committed a crime, and you can have that evidence thrown out because they went into your house without a warrant, that is a procedural win because they didn't follow the U.S. Constitution when they did the search. And I get that some people would call that a technicality. I think that's arguable. I do. But even within that framework, it is important to understand that what Judge Lyman did here was not a procedural decision. A procedural decision would have been if he ruled, like, you know, I think and Wayfarer asked this, and he didn't go there. Like, oh, well, the CRD didn't include it ends with us movie LLC. They put the wrong name on the wrong document, so they didn't meet the requirements. And he's like, I'm not even gonna go there. Because that's procedural, right? I could actually see how that might legitimately be called a technicality. You sued the wrong entity. But it would be a procedural decision, but that is not what he did. What he did is he considered and analyzed facts for 16 pages. For 16 pages, he talked about the evidence that had been submitted, the facts, and what those facts meant. That is not procedural, that is substantive law. It is not the question of whether Blake Lively was sexually harassed. That is true. It is the pre-question of whether Blake Lively could ever be sexually harassed in these circumstances. And what he found was she couldn't be, so I don't even need to get to whether she was. The other thing I think is being really um misstated and misunderstood, misunderstood because it's being misstated, is that this test of employee versus independent contractor um is sort of like who's a baby. Who has to be protected, and who's a lioness who doesn't need to be protected, right? Like who's a who's a small player and who's a big player? And that is not where that legal test comes from at all. And I want to read you what the judge actually said in the order at the beginning of the section where he starts to say she had enough power, she was an independent contractor. Okay. This is what the judge says. This is a direct quote. Quote The undisputed facts reveal that Lively enjoyed a degree of economic independence sufficient to make her an independent contractor. End quote. Economic independence is the critical term. This is about a job. This is work, right? So the question is not who likes everybody more? Is it a popularity contest? This is about when working on a job, was she reliant on these folks for how the job went, for what her work environment looked like, for how she got paid, for where she went, when she showed up? And he said, no. Because she had economic independence. Because she could bargain for her pay, she could bargain for the location, she could bargain for her edits, she could bargain for back-end profits. It is an economic independence. I think that's really getting lost in there. And, you know, I won't bore you with the whole like down into the weeds of where these tests come from for independent contractor versus employees. Um, when you're dealing with them on um sort of some tax issues, which happens if you're you're dealing with independent contractors in the workplace, you know, how are you going to tax them? The test there is called the economic realities test. It's all about money, you guys. It always is, right? Again, it's all about power. But these tests come from agency law. They come from the part of the law that says sometimes you are acting in your own self-interest, and sometimes you are acting on behalf of somebody else. Sometimes you are an agent acting on behalf of a principal, right? And so what this economic independence test does that the court used is it looks at was this person just carrying out their employer's job? Were they just acting as an agent of the employer? Was she just standing in and saying whatever it ends with us movie or Wayfarer says, I'm just doing, I'm carrying out their work? Or did I have my own personal interests in this work? And of course, the undisputed facts are that it was the latter. Um, I also want to read one other part of this that talks about the lively and Baldoney uh sort of interaction on the movie, because hopefully we won't hear too much about this anymore. But this issue of who was really in charge, right? Because there was a lot of um, a lot of conversation about, like, yeah, she had a lot of power, but also he was the director. And ultimately the director calls all the shots. And that was sort of the argument that Lively's team tried to make to show as an artist, she can only go so far. Um, and here's what the judge said. And I thought this was really well articulated to show what the situation was, and also to sort of say, I'm not saying this is true for all actresses on all projects. This is only about the circumstances of this case. So let me read it to you. Quote Lively may have been subject to some extent to Baldoni's direction. In the end, he was the one to call for lights, to direct the camera to start shooting, and to tell the actors when to act. But his discretion was also not unlimited. Baldoni, too, was subject to constraints on his creative freedom. He was required to direct according to the script and did not have control over the script. From him to depart from the script, he needed Lively's assent. If, for example, Lively did not want a scene to deviate from the screenplay in a particular manner, he could not direct her to do so. So what the judge found was at the least the power was equal. And that's why she couldn't have been sexually harassed. Now, one conversation came up as part of all of this that I actually think is a really important conversation to have. Um, and I'm glad that it was brought up. And that is this conversation. It came up through a sort of a um an insincere way, but I actually think it's an important conversation, which is people are suddenly very aware of um, oh, that's why all of these companies like Uber and DoorDash and all these gig workers in this certain economy, they make everybody contractors to avoid having to give them rights. And that's absolutely true, right? When you make everybody an independent contractor, so you don't have to worry about discrimination law and you don't have to worry about giving them benefits, right? The fact that we get our health insurance through our work, that's a World War II thing, which don't get me started, makes it much, much worse, right? Because it makes it really hard for people to leave uh bad work situations. Um, and that's absolutely true. That is a real problem. Um, and you know, just as a matter of, again, US employment law, we have a very employer-friendly federal legal scheme and always have. Employees in the United States are almost always in an inferior bargaining position, unless they are like a high-level executive that everybody really, really wants, although I've seen plenty of those people get their heads cut off too. Or unless they have a union, right? That's how workers try to even out the power, even out the bargaining position, is having a union and saying, well, it's not just you versus me, it's you versus me and all these other people. Um, to make matters worse, and this is something that all of the independent contractors aren't covered, people ought to know, is that everybody who works for a small business isn't protected by federal laws either. Um again, I won't bore you with the whole commerce clause. That's a Patreon thing, I think, because I think it's fascinating, but most people don't, um, about how federal laws can apply to people who are living in states within the United States, because every state has its own sovereign government in the United States, and there's always this tension between federal law and state law. But federal employment laws are such that if you don't have at least 50 employees, they don't cover you. And the estimates they do this this every year, and it's usually about 50% of the workforce. So, no, Blake Lively is not covered by Title VII, and neither are 50% of the day-to-day workers in the United States. State laws really matter. Where you live matters. Some states have great laws for employees, and some of them don't. As far as, you know, independent contractors, I heard a lot of people say, like, I'm an independent contractor, but I don't have that much bargaining power. Um, and I want those people to find a way to get empowered. Maybe I can help to know, like, you need to maybe put in your thing. If someone sexually harasses me, I'm out and you have to pay me my full amount.

unknown 29:49

Right?

SPEAKER_01 29:50

You need to know to bargain for things like that because you need to know what you're covered by and what you're not. But I think the takeaway needs to be that Blake Lively is in no way representative of any of those people. She is not an avatar for those people. Because she knew, put sexual harassment provision in my deal. She knew to do that, or her lawyers did. She kept working without signing a contract, as I thousands of you have said to me over the last year, who gets to do that? Someone with power. But you can't have the power to do all of those things and bargain for all of those things and negotiate for all of those things, and then turn around and say, I was powerless in this workplace. You can't have it both ways. And that's essentially what the judge found. All right, let's talk about the things that I didn't like in this order, because there were a couple. There are things I was like, I don't know. So I had really convinced myself that the contract writer agreement, the 17-point agreement, that there was no consideration for it because Lively didn't give anything because she was already required to film the movie. But Judge Lyman pointed out that under the offer letter, she was only obliged for six weeks of filming. And so when the strikes happened and when it came out to be more than six weeks, her agreeing to do more than six weeks, she did give something more to the pot. And I think he's right. I'm frustrated with it, but I think he's right. You know, I've been trying this entire time to figure out. I know that the strikes did something. The strikes changed something. Maybe it, you know, caused her to go home and think, how can I fix this situation? Maybe it caused her to uh get angry about the situation. I don't know. But now I think that's part of it is that the strikes happening and having that big chunk of time where the film was not being made, that gave her the ability to go back in and bargain for more stuff to renegotiate the terms of her work because it was going to be more than six weeks. So I'm frustrated with it, but I looked at the facts, I looked at the arguments, and he's right. Um, another thing I was frustrated with was I have felt since the beginning that how can uh loss profits to your side businesses be an adverse employment action? It doesn't have anything to do with your employment on this film. And um, you know, he didn't he didn't go there. He said, no, I think it's enough to have it move forward to a jury. Where I think he could have said, sorry, but no. Um, and what it appears to me that he did was he said, you know, you can file motions in Lemini on her damages. And what that means is if you want to challenge whether these lost profits can be tied to this employment situation, you can do that in a motion in Lemini. You can do that in a what's going to be presented at trial. And that's probably right, again, as frustrated as I am, because that does happen. That actually happened with Mr. Nag last year. Um, he had a case and they had a motion in Lemini about the other side's lost profits, and all of the lost profits got held out of the trial because the judge was like, these are too speculative. You can't prove these. And it essentially tanked their case. So I think there's going to be more movement on that at the motions and limini stage. But I was frustrated. I wanted to see, like, your, you know, your reputation for selling hair care products cannot possibly be an employment action under employment laws. As an employment lawyer, I kind of wanted to see that, and I didn't get that. That was unsatisfying. I was also kind of frustrated with finding out how broad the Fija, the California um civil rights laws retaliation um law is that you don't have to prove direct causation, you just have to prove retaliatory motive, which I still am not sure I get. I'm I'm reading up on it because I don't I don't get it. Um so I don't like that. That gives me the willies. Um I just don't like the idea that, you know, motivation, intent is usually not an issue in civil cases. It doesn't matter what you intended, it matters what happened, right? So I have a lot of learning to do on that. But the judge did give a little bit of an indication there, not a little bit, a big one. Um so the only reason that the FIHA uh retaliation got to survive, even though it's a California law, and California law was largely out because of the ALA not being enforceable, um, is because the office that Jen Abel and Melissa Nathan worked from at Tag was in Los Angeles. And um, and Baldoni and Heath live in Los Angeles. And so he's like, well, that it has a nexus to California in a way that the sexual harassment didn't. However, the judge also dropped this footnote, which to me is a message to Wayfair to say, hey guys, you forgot this. Maybe you should try this hint, hint. The footnote says, quote, there may exist a question regarding the application of the FIA retaliation statute, where the allegedly retaliatory conduct has a sufficient territorial nexus to California, but the underlying harassment about which the plaintiff has complained does not. No party has raised that issue on these motions, so the court has no occasion to address it. What he is saying there is hey, there might be an argument that if one of the elements of retaliation occurred outside of California, that none of the claim can live in California. Right? Because essentially what's happening now is they're saying the adverse action happened in California, but the protected activity happened in New York. And so the judge said, nobody brought it up, but you know, you might want to try. So I suspect that we are gonna see something from Wayfarer on that. Now, if that happened and the FIHA retaliation claim got kicked, now I think we are really dealing with fumes. And I'll tell you why in a minute. In terms of looking at the claims that are left, and there's gonna be a lot of um misinformation, some on purpose, some not, um, about this idea of the judge finding sufficient evidence for protected activity, right? So again, go back to that thing that I said a little while ago of on summary judgment, the judge um construes all facts in favor of the non-movement, in favor of lively. So he construes every fact in favor of lively. And what a judge cannot do at summary judgment is to make a credibility decision. That is a fact issue. Credibility is a fact issue. So he says, you know, this question of did she reasonably believe that she was complaining about sexual harassment? That is the standard for protected activity. What did she reasonably believe? She can be wrong, but what did she believe at the time? And he said, I'm not gonna make that call because I can't make a credibility call at summary judgment. Only a jury can do that. I do think it's possible that a jury could find that she genuinely thought talking about porn and people coming into her trailer were based on her sex. She can go and try to prove to a jury that that's genuinely what she thought. But I'm not gonna say she didn't mean what she said. And I just want to make a note for all of the Baldone supporters out there who feel really strongly that she did not believe she was being sexually harassed, that she made this up, that she lied. Um, which, you know, you're entitled to your opinion. The fact that the judge cannot make the credibility call at summary judgment is a thing you want. In the bigger picture, the reason why judges can't make credibility calls is because imagine the level of power that that would give judges beyond what they already have if they got to decide who was believable and who wasn't. Imagine how much they could abuse the power that they have. It's not whether somebody is credible to Lewis Lyman. It is about whether someone is credible to a jury of their peers. You want a jury to be deciding credibility because it keeps the power in the hands of people. So, what Lively has to do now, what Lyman said Lively can go ahead and do now is try to convince a jury that she reasonably believed she was complaining about sexual harassment. They may buy it, they may not. But she gets to tell them their story and they get to decide whether they think she's telling the truth or not. So, you know, that also means, and I'm gonna keep talking and keep thinking over the next weeks as all of this settles in about all the things that could come up at trial. It's like, you know, my brain is swimming. But it just puts more emphasis on the fact that a big part of the case that Blake Lively has to prove, and remember the burden of proof is hers. She is the plaintiff. Now it's low, it's only a preponderance of the evidence. So it's more likely than not. But it just reiterates that a huge part of her case is dependent on whether the jury believes what she says, believes her credibility. Now, it's no longer do they believe her that she thought this conduct was severe or pervasive, but it's whether they believe that she actually thought she was complaining about sexual harassment. They have to buy her story. And that's a lot of pressure for her. So what happens now? All right, everything happens now. Um this is a this is something that the lawyers have been preparing for, right? Um, Frank is snoring really loudly, if you can hear it. Um so they were pretty much preparing everything for uh as if anything could happen. Now I'm sure they are all very relieved. They're still gonna bill their clients for everything that they drafted that no one's gonna need, but you know, they now need a lot fewer uh things. So they've got you basically prepare for all of the things that the parties get to weigh in on when it comes to trial. So in this court, the parties get to say what they want the potential jurors to be asked in their part of their jury selection. So in the first phase of jury selection, right, there's standard questions that courts ask, like, what job do you do? And have you, are you, have you ever been arrested and for what? And have you ever heard of Blake Lively? You know, those kinds of things. And then the parties get to add things to that, and they usually argue over what gets to be added, right? Have you ever seen Deadpool? Do you think it's funny? That kind of stuff. Um, so the parties get to submit, each side gets to submit. This is what we think the jurors ought to be uh asked, and then Judge Lyman will decide. They submit those motions in Lemini, which I'm gonna talk about in a minute. Those motions are um motions, pre-trial motions to keep evidence out or get evidence in. They are pre-trial evidence rulings on things that are either you know they're gonna come up, so you might as well deal with them now. They're so big there won't be time to argue them in the middle of a trial. Or if they come out before you get a chance to object, could really be problematic and hurt the case. Um I think we're gonna see quite a few of those. So, like I said, I think with um with the retaliation claims, I think there's gonna be a whole bunch of motions eliminated by Wayfarer to try to chip away at whatever is left of the claims that are left. I think we're gonna see one on the damages related to Blake Brown and Betty Booze and Betty Buzz. How can those how can you possibly find that those losses were caused by some online campaign? Um, I think we are going to see something about the contract rider agreement. Um, and how in the hell do you enforce that thing? Because the section that Blake Lively says was breach, which is the section that's one of the claims she has left. She has the retaliation under fiha and breach of the rider, is section 11. And section 11 says no retaliation. But section 11 defines retaliation as attitude changes and sarcasm. So I think we're gonna see something from Wayfair that's like that is unenforceable language. How in the world can we be held civilly liable by a jury because somebody was sarcastic? That has a legal flaw in it somewhere. So I think we're gonna see something on that. We may see something that a couple of followers have brought up that didn't even occur to me, you guys are so smart, which is what about the fact that the Ryder Agreement is an agreement between It Ends With Us movie LLC and Blakeel Inc. It's not with Blake Lively. How can Blake Lively, the individual, sue for breach of that agreement? And if she does, is she admitting that she and Blake will are just the same thing, which means it's her alter ego which creates tax problems for her. So that's also an interesting issue that I wouldn't be surprised if it comes up. I think there is a very good chance that we are going to see a motion and limity on Van Zam. And honestly, I just hope so because I know everybody wants it so badly. For all the people who've been saying, when are we going to hear about Van Zam? When are we going to hear about Van Zam? Now would be the time. Now would be the time that Wayfarer would say, file a motion and limity to say we want to exclude those documents from the trial because they were obtained in a fraudulent way. They were essentially stolen, which they weren't. But you know, there's there's case law out there about that. If you if you obtain information in an inappropriate way, can you use it? And I don't know whether the judge will grant it or not. Depends on how they argument. I don't know what the case law is. But I think this is when we're gonna see it. And I think everybody's probably gonna get really excited about that. They definitely are gonna have arguments about, you know, how much of the sexual harassment stuff comes in, how much needs to come in, because they do have to show, she does have to prove that she was complaining in good faith about sexual harassment. So how much comes in? What do you want to come in? What does Wayfair care about? Like that, that's all very strategic. Um, I think we will probably see some motions and limini about the experts. Those are very common uh subjects of motion and liminy. Like this expert is going far beyond their ability to opine on this. They're called Daubert motions in federal court, which is the thing that this expert is opining on is not an accepted area of science, right? This they're making this up. This isn't reliable, and the jury shouldn't be able to rely on it. I think we might see some of that some of that, especially with all of the online stuff. So that should be interesting. Um I wouldn't be surprised if we saw something about Terra Reynolds himself. Are we even allowed to mention him? Because, you know, I could see the lively people saying, we don't even want to talk about him. He's not gonna be there, he's not gonna testify, he has nothing to do with this, whatever. But I could also see the Wayfarer people saying, you know, part of our defense is that to the extent that we did any social media work or manipulation, it wasn't because she cried sexual harassment. It was because her very famous and influential husband kept threatening us. That's what we were afraid of. We weren't afraid of her, we were afraid of him. And that is borne out, of course, by these messages that he sent to people like the head of the studio saying this guy's a sexual predator. Now, they didn't depose him. Um, and they probably, if they were gonna call him as a witness, would have a right to depose him beforehand, but maybe they just wing it. Sometimes you just do. It'll be interesting to see where he falls in all of this. I can't figure out if I was on lively side whether I'd want that or not. It could be good, it could be bad. It depends on what he's there to testify about. But I think it's possible that we see some kind of motion about that. Um, the other things that we're gonna see are draft jury instructions and verdict forms. Um, these are the things that are boring but like super important because the parties have to submit what they think the jury should be told. You know, when you watch a trial and the judge like instructs the jury on the law before he sends them back into the room and then they check the box. All of that is negotiated, right? There are usually standard forms. Um, and I don't know about this California law, I don't know what the standard jury instructions say. Um, but there's usually standards, and then people want to add stuff to it. They want to add special instructions that relate just to that situation. So I suspect that both sides are gonna want to change the standard jury instructions around a little bit. They're gonna want to add some stuff. The Wayfarer people might want to add some stuff about their affirmative defenses, like unclean hands. That might really start to come up again. It's been just sitting there dormant for a year in their affirmative defenses and their answer, that might really start to come up again. And then they get to put together the verdict form that literally is you know, do you find a, you know, if you check this box, element one, element two, element three, and then how much money? Um, so they're gonna be submitting all of that. So all of that is coming down the pike in the next couple of weeks, um, like literally in the next couple of weeks. So I will be sure to keep track of all of that. But frankly, that's the fun stuff. And the fact that the sexual harassment stuff is now out of it, um, I think is gonna make these pretrial motions um a lot more technical in a way that I think is gonna be more interesting, right? Because it's it takes some of the emotion out of the issues. I mean, Blake Lively, no matter how much she cries and talks about how she feels that this was an intentional campaign, can't prove it by herself. She has to rely on expert testimony and she has to rely on the documents that she got from the Wayfarer parties and from Tag about the things that they were talking about. She can't prove it herself. In sexual harassment, she can kind of make the case by herself. You know, if you do a convincing enough job and say, like, this is how I felt, and this felt this way to me, and this is what happened to me as a result, you can sometimes kind of make the case, but she can't do that here. A lot of the power, you know, she does have to prove that she was credible, but a lot of the power rests in the hands of people that you can't really control and how well a witness is gonna hold up, an expert witness is gonna hold up under cross-examination. So I think we're gonna see a lot of like really like juicy, wonky motions that I'm sure we will all be happy to explain. Um, you know, Britt and I have already been geeking out about a couple of Dalbert motions we think are gonna be filed. So I will make sure to cover all of that for you. Um, my voice is waning, but I just wanted to thank you all for sticking with me during all of this. Like this is such a ride. And, you know, I'm thankful because if it wasn't for this case, I wouldn't be doing this and I'm having the time of my life. Um, so I just want to thank you all for sticking with me and for being evangelists of like, you know, facts and whatnot. Um and, you know, go out there and evangelize to the world that the ruling is that Blake Lively could not have been sexually harassed because she just has too much power. And you know, in 2026, I think that's a pretty, a pretty uh, that's a statement people will accept. Power is, everything is always about power, but especially now. Um, and this reckoning with power that I think this side of the world is having, and I think other parts of the English-speaking world are having, I think this fits pretty squarely within it. Um, and you know, like I said, we're now getting into more of the wonky detailed stuff. So for those of you who don't like all of the celebrity drama and you like the wonky stuff, you're gonna love this next phase. Um, but I also just want to leave you with this, and you can you can take it with a grain of salt, but in my personal opinion, um, what happened this week was a confirmation for me of something that I've been trying to say that I think was at least borne out in part, and that is that the law does work, it does make sense, that the judge knows what he is doing, that the facts always come out, that justice isn't always obtained, but the facts come out, and that efforts to stop people from thinking too hard are alive and well. And I appreciate each and every one of you for resisting that. So I'm gonna go drink some tea and take a nap because the drama never stops, and someone has to make it make sense.